


The Only War Worth Dying For

by 15m2andadoor



Series: Prism [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blind Character, Deaf Character, Dreams and Nightmares, Eating Disorders, Flashbacks, Insomnia, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Poor Prompto Argentum, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2019-08-27 22:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16710856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/15m2andadoor/pseuds/15m2andadoor
Summary: This, he knew, this exercise in being flesh and bone.(Another one where Prompto tries and fails and tries again.)





	1. Chapter 1

The sun went down after no more than an uncertain glimpse over the horizon, bruising the sky, leaving its parting gift in red and purple and black. This was definitely worth taking a picture. Prompto stretched his hand out to pull up his camera, meeting empty air. Right, he had left it at home. His memory instead of a flash drive, then, and a smoke ring instead of an aperture. Another bad habit for his collection, but it served its purpose. He had done worse to stay functional.

If Ignis minded the smell, he never mentioned it. Prompto stopped by once a week to help out with the few tasks that still presented an issue to him. Not many of those were left. When motivated, Ignis was an unstoppable force, and in the last year, he had applied most of that force towards working again. Now that he was there, he had declared his new goal to be getting away from his desk and back into the field, but even sighted, that would have been a challenge.

He lived on the third floor of the building that housed most members of the interim government, and doubled as an office. Their agreement was for Prompto to just use his spare keys, because most of the time, Ignis was already stuck neck-deep in work when he arrived, and a knock on the door was easily missed. He knocked anyway before he let himself in. “Room service!”

“Hello, Prompto.”

The apartment was dark except for the glow of the laptop screen. Papers were neatly stacked behind it, and a mug was standing beside, the contents of which had probably long gone cold. Prompto leaned against the edge of the desk, and waited until Ignis had removed his earphones. “So, what are we up to today?”

“Just a few letters, we should be done here in no time at all.”

“Right.” Prompto finally flipped the light switch. Nobody had told Ignis what his place looked like, and hopefully nobody ever would. Judging by the 7th century kitsch of the couch and the color of the kitchen cabinets, whoever had been in charge had just ransacked an old lady’s garage sale, and if anyone ever mentioned the cobwebs in the far corners of the ceiling, the cleaning spree would never end. Maybe he’d just dust them out someday while Iggy was busy elsewhere. For now, he leafed through the papers instead. “Not even proper letters. You have three flyers from the supermarket down the street - it’s Pet Week, twenty percent off kibble - and a report from Alstor.”

“Senator Relkha’s cats will be overjoyed, I’m sure, but the report takes priority.”

“Want me to read the whole thing to you?”

“A summary will suffice.”

The words on the page were matter-of-factly, but the picture they painted was perfectly clear. Acronyms that translated to bodies so mangled there was nothing to be gained from recovering them, damages and names neatly listed.  He could connect faces to three of them. Anco had been a decent guy, a little younger than Prompto. Now all he could see was that face panicked and dissolving into black, eyes all wrong, too familiar, coup de grâce passing through, lips curling up into a sneer, and rage so dense in his chest that he couldn’t breathe. A hand on his shoulder, and he snapped back to the room. His left ear was ringing louder than it had all week, and in his right he heard nothing but his own pulse. He took a steadying breath, and then replied to what Ignis had probably asked him.

“They’re taking a beating down there. Hunters dead, they’re cut off the grid, and their generator can only power one of the floodlights. That was two days ago.”

Not quite the right answer, going by that frown and Ignis speaking up. “This should have gone directly to Monica.”

“And from her to me. Give me some pliers and my unit’s a match.” Prompto took a step forward, breaking contact, leaving the other’s hand hovering in the air for a moment. “I should probably get going.”

Ignis hummed and stretched it out for the report instead. “You won’t be able to do anything until morning. This has to go through the right channels, first.”

“Dude, there hasn’t been a ‘morning’ in weeks. We had about half an hour of light today.”

“Let me rephrase that: You should get some rest before you head out. Would you like some coffee?”

Coffee, coming from Ignis’ mouth, was a magic word. These days, it invoked the unspoken rule that between the two of them a coffee break was a _break_ \- as long as one of them was still holding on to a mug, neither of them was working - but it already had been magic back in Insomnia, and more so through their journey. It had always felt like some kind of puzzle, something about how Ignis only asked when they were alone, about when he asked, how he asked, that was meant to tell him something. Prompto had not quite solved it yet, but by now, he had put enough pieces together to have a rough idea of the overall picture, and if that idea was right, he wasn’t ready for it. He sighed. “No, thanks. Anything else you need?”

“Not at the moment, thank you.” Ignis didn’t push. He never did. “Try to get some sleep.”

Prompto almost laughed. “Sure, will do.”

* * *

Sleep was a rare beast, and an ugly one, too.

The noise around him was one thing. In theory, it was easy to block out, he only needed to turn around and lie on his good ear, but the price for that was being alone with the noise in his own head. He preferred the neighbors. Through the paper thin walls, even he could hear every footfall, and he couldn’t _not_ keep track of them. Doors opening and closing, chatter beneath and above him. Downstairs was a group of three guys around his age, slammed doors and sudden bursts of yelling or roaring laughter that made him jump. Upstairs was a couple with kids, and every time he heard a high-pitched screech he held his breath and kept listening until it resolved into something easier to place. Giggling, mostly, crying, sometimes, and those times he could only exhale again when it was answered by calm voices.

Closing his eyes was enough to warp his tiny apartment into a torture chamber, into a lab, into his childhood bedroom. Leaving them open let the shadows dance. He had torn down the red drapes on day two, after too damn near shooting the window, but all that had done was exchange one hazard for another. The flickering street lights were hardly any better. Depending how long his day had been, they could mimic anything from a dropship overhead to the blue glow of the clone tanks.

He had meant to talk to Aranea about those, about their escape, but he was too afraid of the answer. Chances were she had no idea what he was talking about. Chances were there was good reason he remembered nothing between their goodbyes and being beaten to a pulp in Gralea. And if he started questioning this, he had to question everything beyond that, from the city around him to the integrity of his own body. Was he even in Lestallum, safe for the moment, or was _he_ just toying with him? Maybe even banking on that whole train of thought, relying on Prompto to create his own personal hell?

As things were, all he could do was to pin this down as his reality, latch on to it with his own marks, and his own pain. With his hunger and the acid taste of disappointment every time he failed to make it last. With the burn and sting of the more and more intricate patterns of dots along his hip bones. Human skin blistered and scarred where plastic and metal remained whole. This, he knew, this exercise in being flesh and bone. This was comfort. Sometimes it was even enough to let him sleep.

When Prompto slept, he dreamt.

_He wraps his fingers around Ardyn’s neck, slowly, deliberately, pressing his thumbs against his throat exactly the way he remembers - right below his voice box, let no sound escape - and squeezes. It’s not a decision he makes, not as such, he couldn't let go even if he tried. His hands seize up, cramp, want to curl into fist. The pressure is on his own skin now, his own windpipe narrows. He inhales deeply, only to make sure, only…_

_Ardyn doesn’t move, doesn’t fight. Even as cartilage cracks and his breath turns to harsh gasps, all he does is look up at him with that sickening melange of wry amusement and condescension. His voice echoes in Prompto’s skull._ My, my. Aren’t we eager?

 _Beneath him, wheezing turns into retching coughs, and finally into silence. Prompto lets go, fingers trembling._ _It should be triumph, but all he finds in this moment is bone-deep weariness._

_In a moment, Ardyn will draw in a sharp breath, and he will laugh, and they will start over._


	2. Chapter 2

_… eighty-nine, ninety…_

Numbers weren’t Prompto’s friends. Not because he couldn’t work with them, but because they seemed to be dictating his life more and more the longer all of this, whatever this was, went on. By now, almost everything could be broken down by numbers.

_… ninety-seven, ninety-eight…_

The only way to tell night from day was the four digits cycling over a screen, and crossing off those cycles was the only way to tell that they had been out here for three months by now. In that time, they had repaired the damn floodlight five times, and now it had broken down once more. In the four hours he had slept before it did, he had strangled Ardyn seven times. The next thirty minutes had been two hundred milliliters of what was hopefully coffee, three hundred calories shaped like toast, six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen just in case, only to balance on top of that rig for five hours and nine cigarettes, interrupting his work just as many times to shoot approaching daemons. They were one fuse short this time, which would set them back by three days, because that was how long it took Lestallum to send anything their way, even if everything went perfectly.

It never did.

Nothing to be done about those numbers, or their own number at the outpost. What had to go down was the amount of daemons rushing them during that time.

_… one hundred and one, two, three, four…_

His targets had only discovered him after the third shot. Unfortunately, the fourth had been a miss, and made his position obvious to even the dumbest flan in the group. Unfortunately, there had been ten of them, not seven as expected. Unfortunately, one of the unexpected candidates had been a ziggurat.

Now he was on his back, counting heartbeats, each one pumping less blood to his stupid brain and more to the ground. Lava pouring out of his shoulder, everything was fuzzy. He couldn’t even tell where his hand was.

_… one hundred and twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…_

Something didn’t add up. _Right. You should be shashlik. You’re still alive. How?_ The only direction he could turn his eyes was up, and above him, there were flashes of light. Nothing to hear. The longer he lay here, the more he felt like there was cotton in his ears. Trying to get up had only made it worse, and even if the light meant help, playing dead was probably better. Prompto closed his eyes.

_… twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine…_

_Prompto wakes up._

_The pain comes in waves. His shoulder is out of its socket again from having to support most of his body weight right after taking a few hits too many. Everything smells like vomit, and he cannot get past those two sensations, cannot concentrate on what he sees. Maybe it’s better this way._

_Prompto wakes up._

_A memory of pain lingers, but that is what his nightmares tend to be like. He isn’t bleeding out, and the reason why he thought he would be is starting to fade. It’s half past six, and his mother has been in a good mood for the last few weeks, so if he lays the table now, they can have breakfast together._

_They do, and they laugh, and he eats. When the tea has gone cold, she says, “There is someone I’d like you to meet,” and his stomach sinks. The second he sees the smile, the red hair, he knows that this man entering their kitchen is the worst of them so far, means more pain than he can handle. He wants to run, but his feet are bolted to the ground._

_“Why,” the stranger says, “I think we are going to get along just fine.”_

_Prompto wakes up._

_He must have spaced out, found a place less jarring than this reality, but all he can remember is fear, and he has more than enough of that here. Ardyn’s hand is in his hair, almost gentle, a counterpoint to the pain in his jaw and throat. His knees are on fire. He can’t breathe._

Prompto woke up. He couldn’t breathe. Something was covering his mouth and nose, and he needed to get a hold of it _now,_  but his arms were cramping, one half numb on top of him, the other pins and needles caught underneath him. He had to _move_. A hand closed around his biceps. He tried to twist away, but the grip only tightened.

“Hey! Hey. Easy. You’re okay.” Another hand pulled the blanket he was tangled in away from his face. He could breathe. He could see.

That was Gladio holding on to him. The feeling in his arm was coming back, and he twisted once more to get him to let go of it. It worked, just like moving his shoulder still worked, but probably wasn’t advisable yet. A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he fell back against the pillows.

“Just let me die.” It hardly came out like the bad joke he had meant it to be, and left a strange aftertaste on his tongue. It also left a tight expression on Gladio’s face, but instead of a high volume lecture, he gave him a bottle, cap twisted off. Prompto frowned, but took it. The last time they had seen each other had been one of the rare occasions when he had openly lost his temper. It had been nothing of substance, not really. One of them had mentioned Gralea, and from there everything had devolved into both of them yelling and pointing fingers, trying to assign blame for a situation they had already analyzed to death, and that they knew had been out of their control. No conclusion, either, just him storming off when Gladio had lifted his hand a little too high, a little too close.

The water settled in his stomach like a boulder. “I’m gonna puke.”

“You’d deserve it.” Prompto expected at least some anger, but there was none to be found, only exhaustion. “I don’t know what _you_ thought that was, but _I_ think it was bullshit.”

His first thought was to report the mission details, as he had laid them out to the Glaives and hunters back in Alstor, but he stopped himself short. The plan came apart as he put it into words meant to make it look like a solid idea. It hadn’t been. The second was to just pick up their fight again, because that would have made things easier, but he felt too sick.

“I know,” he said instead. “I’m sorry, I… didn’t think that through. I just didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. We’ve lost enough people in the last… fuck. How long was I out?”

“Three days, on and off. Two since they dragged you back to Lestallum.” Gladio hesitated for a moment, and that told Prompto all he needed to know. “Potions and elixirs only do the trick when you still have all your limbs attached. Someone needed to sew most of your arm back on.” He opened his mouth to add more, then closed it again, no words but something halfway between shaking his head and a shrug.

The memories were hazy, but Prompto could remember… muffled shouting, mostly, and “hang on, hang on” and probably at least one “told you so.” Because everyone had told him so, and he had shut them down, telling himself that it was easier to take the camp alone from an oh-so-safe distance than having three people jump around between his targets. They weren’t Noct, or Gladio, or Ignis back when he saw everything. He couldn’t anticipated virtual strangers the way he used to anticipate them, could he?

“Look,” Gladio tried again after a moment, “it’s enough that we have to make do without Noct. Getting yourself killed isn’t gonna help anybody.”

Until now he had been sure that all he did was in the name of staying alive and useful, but maybe he was wrong. The mission had been designed to fail right from the start, and he had designed it that way. If this had been anyone else, he’d have called a spade a spade and insisted that they get help.

Prompto shivered. Not what he wanted. He wanted the pain to end, yes, and the anxiety, and the nightmares, but not _everything_. He wanted to be there for Ignis. He wanted to help keep the world in one piece while Noct was gone. He wanted to _see_ Noct again, more than anything. If he stayed like this, none of that was going to happen.

The question of how to be any different just ricocheted from the back of his skull, uselessly rolled through his brain for a moment, and then lay dead. To stop being like _this_ , he needed to know what _this_ was in the first place. He wasn’t okay, but when had he ever been? What he needed was some level ground, some thought that wasn’t already poisoned. The closest he could find was, _This is fucked up,_ and, _I don’t want to die._

“Prompto?”

His body had picked up on the idea before he had, teeth chattering and pulse thrumming, the beats too rapid to count. At this rate, he really _was_ going to throw up. He needed to calm down, now, but he couldn’t _do_ anything with Gladio looking at him like that. A cigarette, maybe. There was still half a pack of tobacco on his desk, right where he’d forgotten it three months ago, next to his camera--

Desk. Camera. Gladio had taken him home. This was his apartment, and as much as he loathed the place, it beat being stuck in a room with a dozen strangers in an overcrowded hospital by miles.

There wasn’t any room for feeling _more,_  so when relief and gratitude poured into the cracks, anyway, they split him right open. What was meant to be “thank you” turned into a sob, and he knew how this went. Once it had started it had to run its course, he could never make himself stop, and that alone had caused and escalated more arguments than he could count. Gladio grabbed his shoulder, and Prompto went still. _Here we go._

No shaking. No yelling. No “keep yourself together”. Just his friend pulling him to his chest and holding him. Somehow, it was worse, because _gods,_ he needed this, he needed this so much, and he didn’t deserve any of it. He was supposed to help keep a country in one piece until its king returned. He was not supposed to need reminders to _breathe, just breathe, that's it_ , while bawling his eyes out. He was not supposed to need someone to tug him in when he was all cried out, an stay, silently, until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the lovely happyberry for the beta <3


	3. Chapter 3

For some reason, Prompto didnʼt dare to turn on the light, even though Ignis wouldn't notice, much less mind. Maybe because it was three in the morning, he was uninvited, and he let himself in anyway.

“Prompto?” The voice came from the couch in the corner, not the bedroom, and was somewhere between groggy and alarmed.

“Yeah. Uh… Sorry, I know it’s late and I didn’t call, and—”

“Are you alright?” 

“Yes. No. I—” Prompto hesitated for a moment. “I suckerpunched the Immortal.”

“Excuse me?”

“I punched Cor Leonis in the face.”

“So I did hear that right.” Ignis’ turn to hesitate. “Have a seat. Would you li—?” 

“Yes. Gods, yes, please.”

* * *

Cor Leonis is a good man.

Someone in his position could easily look down on him, but Cor always looks him in the eye. He leaves Prompto with no illusions about the purpose of the small group of Glaives that is his new squad. In some way, all of them have lost their health or their mind to the Dark. The number of soldiers with access to royal magic, however, is finite, and those among them with experience are rare. In a better world, none of them would be out in the field anymore. In this world, they don’t have that luxury. A grace period of training and team building is the best he can offer.

Prompto accepts this, at first — later learns to love it. He has never been in an environment with clearer and more rational rules, and he cannot say why this is liberating, but it absolutely is. The physicality of it is a life saver, the ache in his muscles, falling into bed so exhausted that sleep is just a spot of blackness between hitting the mattress and morning. Everything has a purpose, every movement, every touch, and getting close to people is so much easier with the intention of throwing them.

* * *

Prompto barely remembered to take off his boots before he pulled his feet up onto the couch. It was a mild night, but he was shivering anyway. He grabbed a blanket, and tried to keep his focus on bundling up in it while he waited for Ignis to return. It was good enough to push his thoughts onto a different track for the moment, heavy wool, and only one of three to choose from within his reach alone. Chances were that Iggy had picked the furniture himself, after all. It made sense that his apartment would not be decorated for matching looks, but for variation in textures.

A steaming mug appeared in his line of sight, and Prompto took it. “Thanks.”

Ignis nodded, and sat down to his right before asking, “Mind telling me how you are not currently detained?”

“I think he let me hit him.”

Ignis hummed and turned his own mug in his hands.

“We had… a talk. I mean, we’ve talked about private stuff before, but it was just about… things that he absolutely had to know. All of us have issues of some kind, and he has to deal with making a cohesive unit out of that mess, so… yeah.”

* * *

Ground fighting doesn’t go well the first time. There is weight on him and a leg pushing up between his, and it takes him far too long to remember that he can tap out. After Laevis rolls off him, it takes him what must be a full minute before he can sit up and say, “I need a shower.”

They let him run without further questions. No comments when he returns almost an hour later, skin red and raw. Sylca throws something at him - one of her jackets. He could fit into it twice, easily, and it smells like cotton and soap and the terribly minty sweets she keeps in her backpack. Their eyes lock for a moment, and she just nods when he pulls it on, then goes about her business again.

* * *

“So he already knew how I react to some things, and it… uh. I guess it’s not too hard to see why.” Prompto sipped his coffee and pulled a face. Still too hot. “And that wasn’t really what it was about, only that it… kind of was. One of those things where you talk about how people are the way they are, and then we got to how I am the way I am, and he mentioned—”

* * *

“Hold on, hold on. You knew my dad?”

“I was the one who asked him to take you in.”

“What- what do you mean?”

“Comrade. We found you during a reconnaissance mission. You were…” Cor tries to find the right words, maybe the right lie.

Prompto cuts him off before he can. “I was one of the things they experimented on.”

The reply silences Cor for a moment, sends him reeling for the time it takes Prompto to take two deep breaths. “Not _things_. Kids. You were the only one who was still… healthy enough to survive the trip back.”

“You mean human enough.” Another beat of silence, and Prompto keeps going, not giving him a chance to recover. “I’ve seen the place. I’ve opened doors with that bar code. I know what I am.”

“What you _are_ is stubborn, and I won’t blame you for what they did. Someone had to look after you - we could hardly leave you there. His wife wanted kids. I wasn’t cut out for taking care of a toddler. It was simple enough.”

“Shit.” Prompto can feel his head spinning, the seat swimming away from underneath him. “That’s… a lot to process for one day.”

The conversation could end here. It probably should.

* * *

Sylca is also there after a night of dreams of losing his teeth and his mind and dissolving into miasma, and after desperately needing to find his body and make it feel real. Skin that could split, not metal and plastic. The stains on the punching bag are red, not black. Red, not black. Red, not… 

The loop is interrupted when he hits fabric and flesh instead of leather. “Take five,” she says, slowly, patiently, as if she was repeating herself. “Clean up. Breathe.”

She is there when he finds himself with water running over his bleeding knuckles, but without the ability to understand why that was and what he had meant to do. Turns off the water, bandages his hands, sits with him on the floor of the locker room and waits until he is present enough to listen. 

“I know anger issues when I see them,” she says, and Prompto snorts.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “It’s not like I break the armory when I check out.” Sylca stays silent, and for a moment Prompto holds his breath. Bringing that up probably wasn’t fair.

She shrugs. “No, you break your hands.”

“That’s something else.”

“No, not really.” He takes a breath to protest, but she continues, “You're just pointing your anger in a different direction. Wrong direction.”

“So property damage is better?” he asks, trying to roll it into a joke. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah,” she replies, perfectly serious. “Doesn’t get _me_ hurt.”

Prompto shifts a bit where he is sitting, arms now crossed in front of his chest, hands out of sight.

“You get just as angry as I do. Takes one to know one.” Another shrug. “Thing is, you don’t let it happen until it just folds back on you. Gets in your way.”

“How?”

Sylca lifts an eyebrow and her scars tug the corner of her mouth along with it, turning the expression into a half-grin. “You don’t get a chance to aim.”

* * *

The conversation could end here, and it probably should, but instead Cor says, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? What about?”

“After your father’s death, your mother—” The marshal shakes his head. “We made sure there was always a free bed in the hospital. Covered her expenses. Never thought that she wouldn’t…”

“Provide for me.”

A nod in reply, and in Prompto’s mind, an idea takes shape — a simple exercise in subtraction: the marshal’s age minus his own. It drops into an acidic pot of memories along with Cor’s words, and brings the conoction to boil. “So you knew.”

“I was aware that conditions weren’t ideal, but—”

Prompto hears him, but he as a hard time listening over the roaring and hissing mess. “You _knew_.”

“Look…”

He had been alone, _so_ alone, and never dared to tell anybody, but had always hoped that something would happen. Anything. And now this man was standing there, telling him that—? “You fucking knew that she was batshit and you did nothing.”

“I couldn’t. It was out of my hands at that point, and—”

“ _Bullshit_.” It burns on his tongue as it spills over, corrosive and then bitter. “I was a kid. You were a fucking adult, and you knew what was happening to me. You could have stopped it! You could have gotten me out of there! Anywhere would have done.”

“It was still preferable to the system. I know that much from experience.”

That last word puts a heavy lid on it, but all that does right now is turn Prompto’s head into a pressure cooker. He needs to leave before anything worse happens, turns without a word.

A hand tightly grips his shoulder, and his vision goes red.

* * *

“I just… exploded.”

“I do hope you won’t punch me if I apologize as well,” Ignis replied. “I had suspicions, but I did not act on any of them.”

Prompto thought about that for a moment, but none of what he had felt towards Cor earlier came back up. No rage, no disappointment. “Iggy… you’re what, two years older than me? Three? And you tried. I mean… I didnʼt get that you were trying to reach out to me at the time, but I do now.”

“I still wish I had been clearer about my intentions.”

“I don’t think that would have worked, anyway.” Prompto sighed. “I probably just would have said that I’m okay, because… I don’t know. Guess thatʼs what you say. I mean I’ve always been pretty good at talking once I get going, and there’s a _lot_ , but…”

Ignis shifted his mug from one hand to the other, and then lifted his arm, a wordless invitation. “It’s quite alright. Being at a point where we _can_ talk does not mean we _must_.”

Prompto leaned in, and the arm around his shoulders was warm, the hold light enough that he could have shrugged it off. “I’m tired.”

Ignis held him just a little tighter. “I know.”


End file.
